Best for
Best for teams putting AI voice agents on real phone lines and testing them before they meet customers.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Retell AI vs. Speechmatics
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for teams transcribing real conversations across accents and languages, including where the audio may not leave their own infrastructure.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Retell AI | Speechmatics |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | lower value From $0.07 / minute of calls Pay as you go, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents depending on the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, plus from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Enterprise is quoted by sales. | From $0.129 / hour of audio Pro tier rate, billed to the second with no commitment. Volume discounts of 20% apply automatically above 500 hours per month for each speech-to-text type, with further discounts above 24,000 hours a year. One credit equals one dollar. |
| Free trial | $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included | Free tier with $100 in credit, no card required |
| Commercial use | Yes, usage-based | Yes, usage-based |
| Output | Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls and web calls, plus chat agents over SMS and a web widget | Transcripts, translations and synthesised speech |
| API | Yes, REST API with Node.js and Python libraries, webhooks and an MCP server | Yes, batch and real-time speech-to-text, text-to-speech, translation and a management API |
| Languages | 57 languages listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, each with the providers that cover it | 55+ languages and dialects for speech-to-text; translation across 69 language pairs |
| Hosting | Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union | Cloud, CPU or GPU containers, Kubernetes, on-premises virtual appliance, or on-device |
| Made in | Not stated | United Kingdom |
| Voice cloning | Yes, custom voices can be added by searching ElevenLabs community voices, importing an existing clone or training one from uploaded recordings, with Inworld, Cartesia, MiniMax, ElevenLabs and Retell's own platform clones as providers; up to 100 custom voices per account | No, the text-to-speech API ships four fixed voices, sarah and theo in British English and megan and jack in American English, and the documentation describes no custom or cloned voice; speed, pitch and emphasis are not adjustable either |
| Real-time use | Yes, live inbound and outbound phone calls and browser web calls, with a proprietary turn-taking model, batch calling for campaigns and live monitoring that lets a human listen in or step in | Yes, streaming transcription returned in under a second, alongside batch transcription of recorded files |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | A call runs as spoken conversation by chaining speech recognition, a language model and text-to-speech; dubbing of existing recordings is not part of the product | Audio translation across 69 language pairs, returned as translated transcript rather than dubbed audio; a Voice Agent API is in early access |
| Editing and controls | Single and multi-prompt agents or node-based conversation flows, knowledge bases, expressive mode for emotion and emphasis, custom pronunciation with IPA, CMU, Pinyin or Jyutping, denoising and interruption sensitivity, voicemail and IVR handling, plus a playground, simulation tests, A/B testing and post-call analysis | Speaker diarization and identification, custom dictionary, language identification, background speech filtering, and speech intelligence for summaries, sentiment, topics and auto-chapters |
| Consent and trust | HIPAA compliant, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, with a BAA and a DPA including EU standard contractual clauses available for self-signing at no extra fee. Per-agent data retention runs from 1 day to 2 years, PII can be excluded from what is stored, and recording URLs can be signed. Services are not currently operated inside the EU | Data is not logged as standard; container, Kubernetes, virtual appliance and on-device deployment keep audio inside your own infrastructure |
| MCP-ready | stated Yes | No |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise |
| Support | Not stated | Email helpdesk |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | more entries Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Avaya, Amazon Connect, HubSpot, Make, n8n, GoHighLevel | LiveKit, Pipecat, Vapi, Zapier |
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Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Retell AI From $0.07 / minute of calls Speechmatics From $0.129 / hour of audio
- Free trial Retell AI $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included Speechmatics Free tier with $100 in credit, no card required
- Deployment Retell AI Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Speechmatics Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise
- Hosting Retell AI Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union Speechmatics Cloud, CPU or GPU containers, Kubernetes, on-premises virtual appliance, or on-device
- Languages Retell AI 57 languages listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, each with the providers that cover it Speechmatics 55+ languages and dialects for speech-to-text; translation across 69 language pairs
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Retell AI
Strengths
- Usage-based per-minute pricing with no contract and $10 in free credits to start
- Testing tooling built into the product: playground, simulation runs, batch tests and A/B splits of live traffic
- Custom voices can be cloned or imported across several voice providers
- HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 and GDPR, with BAA and DPA available for self-signing at no extra fee
Limitations
- The per-minute rate varies widely with the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, so the entry rate is not the rate to budget with
- The vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union
- Retell-managed phone numbers cover the US and Canada only; elsewhere a number has to be brought in
- Building and running an agent assumes developer work; there is no packaged seat-based plan
Speechmatics
Strengths
- 55+ languages with explicit accent, dialect and code-switching coverage
- Runs in the cloud, in containers, on-premises or on-device
- $100 in credit to start, with no card required
- Data is not logged as standard
Limitations
- A developer API rather than a ready-made voice studio
- Text-to-speech on the free tier covers English only
- The Voice Agent API is still in early access
- Volume discounts start at 500 hours a month, so small workloads pay the full rate
Plans
Pricing
Retell AI
- Pay as you go $0.07 Per minute and up, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents and from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Includes $10 in free credits and 20 concurrent calls, with no contract.
- Enterprise Not stated Contact sales. Custom pricing for higher volumes, with dedicated support and implementation, custom compliance terms covering HIPAA, SSO and a DPA, no cap on concurrent calls and a dedicated server option.
Speechmatics
- Free $0 $100 in credit, no card required. 55+ languages for speech-to-text, 2 concurrent real-time sessions and low-latency English text-to-speech.
- Pro $0.129 Per hour of audio, billed to the second with no commitment. 50 concurrent real-time sessions, 10 file jobs per second and email support.
- Enterprise Not stated Volume-based pricing that scales with usage, unlimited concurrency and no rate limits, custom models, custom vocabularies and formatting rules, and SaaS or on-premises deployment.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Retell AI
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Speechmatics
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Retell AI https://www.retellai.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13
Speechmatics https://www.speechmatics.com · checked against the official source on 2026-08-30
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.